HIST 354: Amazons and Viragos: Gender and Power in Early Modern Europe (HC)

Charles II's reign was a period of revolutionary experimentation: in science, art and sexual etiquette. For the first time in British history, Royal mistresses - such as Nell Gwyn - played an active, public role in court life. Women sensed new possibilit

The dominant role of female beauty in 16th-century Venice is unique. One reason for this is the Serenissima's distinctive political-social structure, which granted women special rights in connection with their dowry and their ability to inherit; another was Venice's pivotal role as an international cultural centre. The crucial impetus for the visual realisation of this importance of women came from the city's greatest artist: Titian. For him, artistic beauty was identical with female beauty. He was less interested in the canon of exterior beauty than in a women's character, in femininity as such.

Quinten Massys' An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess') is one of the Renaissance's most famous faces. In a fresh review of the iconic image, this book unveils the painting's original context: its status as a pioneering work of satirical art, its debt to Leonardo da Vinci's grotesque drawings, and what it tells us about the period's complex attitudes towards women, age and normative beauty.

Divided into three sections on cosmetics, clothes and hairstyling, this book explores how early modern women regarded beauty culture and in what ways skin, clothes and hair could be used to represent racial, class and gender identities, and to convey political, religious and philosophical ideals.